WASHINGTON – Tuesday’s primary elections feature three high-profile Democratic women candidates, who each challenge conventions and their party in their own ways.

There’s Stacey Abrams, a Georgia gubernatorial candidate who aims to win with a new approach to politics that involves mobilizing an expanded, diverse electorate — and making history. If she wins the primary and goes on to victory in November, she will be the first African-American woman governor in the country’s history.

Finally, Amy McGrath, a former Marine and political newcomer, has turned a congressional primary against the mayor of Lexington, Ky., into a competitive race.

They are among candidates on the ballots Tuesday in Georgia, Kentucky and Arkansas primaries and primary runoff elections in Texas.

Here’s more:

Abrams or 'Selena'?

You may know her by “Selena Montgomery.” That’s Abrams’ pen name for eight romantic suspense novels she’s written, which she said have sold more than 100,000 copies.

Her real story may be better than fiction.

A Yale Law School graduate, Abrams was the first woman to lead either party in the Georgia General Assembly and the first African American to lead in thestate's House of Representatives.

Abrams is in a primary against another Stacey — former state House representative Stacey Evans. Abrams has raised more money and has polled ahead of Evans. She has the endorsement of liberal groups, including Our Revolution, the activist spinoff organization of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, along with Sanders.

For years, Abrams has worked to rewrite the political playbook for her state, where Republicans have held the Governor’s Mansion since 2003. She wants to change that, and not by using most of her resources to chase moderate and Republican-leaning swing voters.

Instead, she focuses on expanding the electorate by building a broad, statewide coalition and mobilizing non-voters, including those whom she said her party has taken for granted — people of color. In 2013, she founded the New Georgia Project, which she said submitted registrations for more than 200,000 voters of color from 2014 to 2016.

"We have the voters ... to build a brand-new coalition we haven’t really seen in a Southern state,” she told online magazine The Root in January.

Rejecting ‘party bosses’

Moser’s candidacy may represent one of the most high-profile examples this year of the divide between left-wing and establishment Democrats. The writer and organizer is in a runoff race against lawyer Lizzie Pannill Fletcher in Texas’ 7th Congressional District, but the drama began during the Democratic primary.

In February, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — the House campaign arm — took the extraordinary step of releasing opposition research against Moser, branding her a “Washington insider.” The committee pointed to her writing in 2014, “I’d sooner have my teeth pulled out without anesthesia” than move to Paris, Texas, where her grandparents had recently sold their house. She referred to living “directly next door to a deaf-mute drug addict.” She apologized for the language.

The DCCC’s move backfired. Liberals who endorsed Moser were furious, arguing — as they have in several other primaries — that Washington Democrats interfered with the will of the voters. Moser, who came in second in the primary, saw her national profile and fundraising increase.

The DCCC's chairman, Rep. Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, said last month that he remains “deeply concerned” about Moser’s “offensive” writing, and he defended the intervention. Democrats hope to flip the seat held by Republican John Culberson in November.

“We need to make sure we have strong candidates … across the country that can win the general election,” he said.

Moser told the Vox website last month that she’s running on local issues and “didn’t mean to be this kind of folk hero of the left.” In her last ad before the primary, she talked about taking on the establishment.

“We have to fix our broken politics, and that starts by rejecting the system where Washington party bosses tell us who to choose,” she said.

The political newcomer runs in a competitive congressional primary against Lexington Mayor Jim Gray, a millionaire businessman, for the chance to take on Republican Rep. Andy Barr in a race Democrats see as a pickup opportunity. She surpassed Gray in fundraising.

Gray, who launched his campaign after McGrath, "received encouragement" to run from the DCCC and members of Congress because of his "proven ability as a candidate," said his campaign manager, Jamie Emmons. Gray, the first openly gay mayor in Kentucky, carried the district he seeks when he unsuccessfully challenged Republican Sen. Rand Paul for his seat in 2016.

Chandra Brown is first in line to vote at Henry W. Grady High School in Atlanta on May 22, 2018. Voters across the state reported to their regular precincts to decide on candidates for governor, Congress and statewide races in the Democratic and Republican primaries. John Spink, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via AP

Gubernatorial candidate and former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez answers a question from Eric Feldman, right, outside a polling place at Renner Frankford Branch Library in Dallas on May 22, 2018. Today's primary runoff election will decide whether Valdez or Andrew White will be the democratic candidate for Texas governor on the ballot in November. Ashley Landis, The Dallas Morning News, via AP

Cindy Benton celebrates after voting in the Arkansas primary election on May 22, 2018 in Little Rock, Ark. The Democratic and Republican parties held elections Tuesday, while all registered voters were allowed to vote in judicial elections. Kelly Kissel, AP

Keifer Holleman, left, and Olivia Hackney, watch a billboard drive by as they campaign in front of a the C.T. Martin Natatorium and Recreation Center in Adamsville, Ga., on May 22, 2018. John Spink, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via AP

People arrive to cast their ballots at the Columbia Theological Seminary polling precinct during voting in the Georgia midterm primary election day in Decatur, Georgia on May 22, 2018. ERIK S. LESSER, EPA-EFE

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Reports that the DCCC aggressively recruited Gray after McGrath “made a big splash” as a candidate prompted sharp disapproval from a previous DCCC chairman, former representative Martin Frost of Texas, who argued the organization made the “same mistake” with McGrath as they had with Moser.

“We now have a situation where national party leaders in Washington are attempting to sabotage the campaigns of two women running for office in Texas and Kentucky,” Frost wrote in The Hill in March.

McGrath told USA TODAY last month she blames an “old boys network” for her lack of party support, lamenting that it’s easier for wealthy men to become candidates in her party.

“It’s really sad,” she said. “There’s no Democratic woman, ever in this state, who has ever held federal office, so it is very much old-school type of stuff.”

Neither candidate is included in the DCCC’s Red to Blue program. Asked to comment on the primary, DCCC Communication Director Meredith Kelly focused instead on Barr, saying he is one of the “most vulnerable incumbents” who is “in for the fight of his life.”